Prakash Offset hosts open house to showcase the Heidelberg Anicolor

Prakash Offset’s PR Nayak thanked the Heidelberg India team headed by General Manager, Peter Rego for the company's endless support since 1983 when the print firm’s first Heidelberg machine was commissioned. Today, the company’s shopfloor houses eight Heidelberg presses including the Anicolor printing press installed in January 2014 and a Xerox 1000 digital press (at Kodialbail plant) for short runs.

The Anicolor installed at Prakash Offset seems to be poised to handle the medium run print jobs such as those with quantities ranging from 100 sheets onwards.Nayak’s nephew and partner at the firm, Anand Prabhu, said, “Being a commercial printer with offset and digital combi set-up, we feel that when a print run crosses 120-130 sheets, the economics are in favour of offset.”

“Earlier we used to convert such short run jobs to offset and deliver them from our Baikampadi facility. However, this meant four to five hours of turnaround time. With Anicolor’s shorter make-ready times we are able to deliver the same job in 20 minutes,” added Prabhu.

According to Prabhu, in a shift of eight hours the new press churns out more than 40 jobs irrespective
of sheet size or substrate.

During the Anicolor demonstration moderated by B Saseendran, Prakash offset’s Operator printed five jobs each of 125 sheets in thirty-five minutes including make-ready and changeover times.

Each job was different from the other in terms of artwork and grammage and type of substrate from 170 gsm art paper to 300gsm art card to 250gsm Natural Evolution to 300gsm textured paper. The highlight was that even the difficult jobs with heavy ink coverage were changed in less than seven minutes.

The Anicolor press consists of a zoneless inking unit with a format sized engraved screen roller (anilox roller), a format size inking form roller and inking unit temperature control for rapid inking up and stable ink feed.

Explaining the Anicolor technology, Udo Fiebiger, Regional business manager, Heidelberg Asia Pacific, said, “The principle is to use an anilox inking system with a chamber doctor blade instead of a conventional roller train. The anilox system applies a metered exact amount of ink on every revolution.In fact the 5th sheet is saleable and one can go any run length in same consistency with top quality printing”

The cylinders are all the same diameter meaning there is no ghosting issues on the printed sheet. The temperature of anilox roller can be regulated in order to make any minor changes in the ink densities.

Heidelberg claims that the machine offers a 90% reduction in make-ready sheets as compared to standard offset press, which in turn helps to improve a printer’s profitability.  Heidelberg’s Ashokan Krishnamoorthy explained the 90:50:50 principle of Anicolor. He said, “This means 90% less make-ready sheets. The anilox inking system eliminates the need to adjust the ink keys to match colours, therefore, 50% faster make-ready. The above two results in 50% more productivity or five jobs printed within thirty-five minutes as shown during the demo at Prakash Offset, which is the working mantra of Anicolor.”

In order to achieve these said results the pre-press department has to be equipped with colour management skills. “As you cannot alter the zonal ink settings on the press, it is crucial to make perfect plates. Hence, the dot gain calibration between press and pre-press and colour management is a must when working with Anicolor,” said Ashokan. 

This Heidelberg Anicolor press is ideal for short runs with frequent job changes. With Anicolor on the shop floor, it is imperative to have in-house CtP system with high volume plate output capacity. Currently, Prakash Offset’s Heidelberg Suprasetter A75 CtP system caters to the plate demands.

In his presentation, Saseendran stressed on the investment component of Anicolor press; as well as the price performance balance. He touched upon ROI analysis as to the time and results with regard to Anicolor performance during short runs.

The evening concluded with Heidelberg’s Indukalpa Saikia highlighting the company’s post-press solutions for short run print products.